Worked on Capitol Hill for Democratic Senators and House members for 20 years

Iran: The Week Obama Took Down the Lobby

01/31/2014 11:42 am ETUpdated
Apr 02, 2014

US President Barack Obama delivers the State of the Union address at the US Capitol in Washington on January 28, 2014. AFP PHOTO/Larry DOWNING/Pool (Photo credit should read LARRY DOWNING/AFP/Getty Images)

It didn't take much. Just the power of the presidency, the State of the Union, and the whole country watching.

Plus the president's will.

And AIPAC's entire campaign to destroy America's chance to reach an agreement with Iran crumbled. Within hours, three senators announced they were no longer cosponsoring AIPAC's bill to kill the Iran negotiations (Gillibrand, Coons and Manchin), and AIPAC's hopes to override Obama's veto ended with a whimper, AIPAC's whimper.

No, this does not mean that AIPAC and Netanyahu are giving up. At every critical junction during the process of reaching a deal with Iran they will be there working hard to subvert Obama's effort. Their March conference in Washington (with 400 Members of Congress in attendance) is already slated to be one massive "Bomb Iran" rally, with Congresspeople and candidates pledging support for war in exchange for campaign cash. (I've been in the room and watched how they do it).

And they still might succeed, particularly if the Iranians give them any ammunition.

But it is less likely now, not after Obama issued his veto threat and asserted that he would continue to pursue diplomacy in the name of "our national interest" (not Israel's, although an agreement is in Israel's interest too, but our national interest). At that moment, with those words, Obama won and the lobby lost.

Think about it. For months AIPAC (and all its satellite organizations and neocon mouthpieces) had prepared for this moment. For a dozen years, the centerpiece of AIPAC's annual confab has been fear-mongering about Iran and making members of Congress enact more and more sanctions bills. And then, since Obama announced his breakthrough, they lined up clear majorities in both houses to defeat him. And, yet, with two sentences, Obama crushed them.

How badly? Sen. Menendez scurried for the elevators the second the speech ended, dodging reporters, and muttering that "the president has the right" to defend the national interest. So he does.

No matter. The president won. And he showed how he can continue to win.

I've known that it could work this way for a long time.

In 1983 or thereabouts, during my four-year stint at AIPAC, I asked Tom Dine, its executive director, if a president of the United States could ever defeat the lobby, even in a case where U.S. national security interests, and lives, were clearly at stake.

Dine responded that AIPAC would win on matters not directly related to U.S. national security but not on an issue that was.

He elaborated: We can never defeat a president who reaches over the heads of AIPAC and Congress and invokes his prerogatives as president of the United States or, even more, the national interest.

The logic behind Dine's thinking was simply that American Jews would never allow themselves to be perceived as putting Israel's interests over America's because, to put it simply, they don't. And the perception that they do is dangerous.

It is fine to strongly support the Israeli government even when it is at odds with the US government -- but only up to a point. The point is when that support clearly contradicts US interests, as defined by the president.

That is why the lobby was so outraged when Reagan administration officials suggested the lobby's opposition to an arms sale to Saudi Arabia represented the wrong answer to the question of "Reagan or Begin?" That little phrase -- "Reagan or Begin" -- won the battle for the administration.

That is why any criticism of the lobby that even hints at the lobby's putting Israel's interests above America's produces such fury, hence the hysteria over the use of the term "Israel Firster."

American Jews will not tolerate the suggestion that they are anything but good Americans. Fighting a president over a national security issue is simply not sustainable. Especially when it is only the fat cats of the lobby and not the Jewish community at large that is opposing the president. That is the case now.

It appears that the president is starting to understand that. Tragically, Obama is not likely to defeat the monied special interests on matters like guns or income inequality, but he can defeat them on foreign policy. That is because when it comes to matters like risking U.S. security and American lives, it is impossible for even the most powerful lobby to defeat him.

In essence, Obama asked, "which side are you on?" So long as that is the question, he wins. And so do we all.